At times in Christian thought, the priorities of pure doctrine and passionate mission have been perceived as opposites on a spectrum where emphasis on one results in neglect of the other, but without one, the other is deficient and doomed to crumble. Mission without doctrine is like a body without a skeleton, but apart from mission, doctrine is like dry bones in a museum. A Lutheran Reformission maintains a dual emphasis, resulting in doctrinal missions as well as missional doctrine.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

My article from this week's newspapers about Miracles and other types of Religious Experience:

Q: If I feel something supernatural
in worship or experience an extraordinary spiritual event, how can I know
whether it was from the True God or some other source? What about miracles – are they always from
God, or can they come from another source?

During the life of Jesus, the Gospels
record numerous miracles performed by Jesus, and even after He ascended into
heaven, we read about a few miracles associated with the Apostles in the book
of Acts. The Old Testament also has its
share of miraculous events pointing forward to Jesus. Christians believe these miracles to be
authentic, because their history and source were recorded by the eyewitnesses
to the events, and there is no record that opponents argued against them.

The most significant and extraordinary
of these miracles is the resurrection of Jesus on the third day after His
death. This is the central event of
Scripture, and the foundation of Christianity.
If we inquire about the possibility of modern miracles, it is fairly
simple to conclude that God is capable of doing them – after all, being
all-powerful is part of the very definition of being God. However, we also have to admit that there is
no promise guaranteeing miracles to Christians of all generations.

This makes it necessary to closely
examine any claims to present-day miracles.
One important assumption that must be challenged is that because a
miracle was helpful, it must be divine.
In contrast to this assumption, we see that the Bible describes several
occasions of false miracles. From
Pharaoh’s magicians in Exodus to the sorcerers and fortune-tellers in the book
of Acts, we see miraculous acts which do not have their source in the True God,
and whether these acts were merely illusions or were done by the power of
demonic forces, they force us to admit that what we observe may be from another
source, which is why both Jesus and Paul warn Christians about false miracles
that will be done to deceive Christians.

Religious experiences are much the
same. There is simply no promise in Scripture
that Christians will experience ecstatic feelings or have sensory confirmation –
whether natural or supernatural – of God’s presence. Instead, it seems that the lives of the
Apostles, as recorded in the New Testament, are characterized by suffering and
trouble more often than victory and emotional highs. Even Paul, to whom Jesus appeared personally,
prefers to point His readers to the eyewitness reports of Jesus’ resurrection
rather than to His own personal experience of Christ on the Damascus road.

Some spiritual experiences can easily
be ruled out as fraudulent because they contradict known facts of Scripture and
Christian doctrine. Other experiences
might turn out to be natural emotional responses without spiritual origins,
while still others are less clear because, even though they are not demonstrably
false, they also cannot be verified as true.

Experience is a tricky thing, because
the spiritual world is not all good.
Instead, there is both good and evil in the spiritual world, and the
difference is not always apparent, because evil does not always declare itself
as such, but instead prefers to disguise itself as good.

So, it is entirely conceivable that
an evil spirit or force might give a person an emotional high, grant earthly
desires, or even perform miraculous signs.
This could be merely for the purpose of distracting a Christian toward
the experience or miracle instead of Jesus, or the assault may be less
direct. Perhaps Satan and His forces
might create a series of positive experiences or miracles, and even allow the
Christian to give God credit for them, so that at an opportune time, they could
then disappoint their victim and give the appearance that God had failed
them.

This is why Christianity has
traditionally approached experience with skepticism, preferring instead to
focus on the verifiable historical events of the life, death, and resurrection
of Jesus, and the sure and certain promises of forgiveness of sins, life, and
salvation dispensed through God’s Word and the Sacraments – because they
provide a solid foundation that cannot be mistaken for an evil deception
disguised under the veil of positive feelings or earthly blessings.

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

My article from this week's newspapers about things "The Lord Told Me..." and other such claims to direct revelation:

Q: If I feel like God has spoken a
message to me personally, is that possible?
How can I know if that message is genuine and whether or not to trust
it?

Extraordinary revelations, personal
experiences, and spiritual perceptions have been a topic of debate among
Christians for centuries. Some of these
are more extraordinary than others, varying from reports of an audible voice
from heaven complete with bleeding or crying statues to the simple feeling
within the Christian that God desires them to take a certain course of action
or beware of certain dangers.

Some of these instances have been
heeded while others have been ignored, and some have been understood as
accurate while others have failed to play out.
With this sort of inconsistency, direct, personal revelation is a topic
to be handled with great care.

To begin with, we have to ask whether
it is possible. Since God has directly
revealed Himself to people, such as Peter, Paul, and numerous Old Testament
prophets, we would have to conclude that God is capable of revealing Himself
directly to individuals. At the same
time, we also have to note that He has never promised that He will reveal
Himself directly to all believers, nor did He ever instruct us in the New
Testament writings to seek such revelations.

On some instances, we can rule such
revelations as certainly inauthentic because they contradict a known fact about
Christian doctrine or God’s character – for example, if a revelation encouraged
murder or directed one to trust in other gods.
Even for those that do not fail on those grounds, we still lack positive
verification of their origin. So, for
any particular instance of suspected direct revelation, the most positive
answer we could possibly give is, “Maybe.”

Another question that must arise from
this is what warrant is there for anyone else to believe the revelation or act
according to it. In this case also,
unless there can be positive verification of the revelation, others would be
unwise to accept its validity, lest they be deceived. So here it would be limited, at best, to only
the person who received it.

Even if such revelations prove to be
accurate, their accuracy does not necessarily equate to authenticity. For example, since the demonic world
possesses great knowledge (although not perfect knowledge, like God) of events
in the world, it is entirely within the realm of possibility that a personal
revelation, even when accurate, is a deception intended to distract a person
from God’s promised means of revelation or to open the door for them to later
accept a deceptions which threaten to undermine faith.

In contrast to these uncertainties,
we do have promises that God will reveal Himself in certain ways and
instruction on where to seek Him. The
most explicit and detailed of these is the Bible. God has promised that the words we find there
will prove authentic, and directed us there to seek Him.

Even the authors of the New Testament
directed their readers back to the Old Testament, and not to their own
experiences, to authenticate their claims about Jesus. And even the Holy Spirit, who often receives
credit in cases of direct revelation is inseparably connected to the written
Word of Scripture, as in the Gospel of John, where Jesus most detailed teaching
on the Spirit describes the Spirit’s work as reminding the Apostles of the
things that Jesus has already said – and not in revealing anything new.

God also reveals Himself as He washes
away sin through Holy Baptism and feeds believers with His Body and Blood for
the forgiveness of sins and to sustain faith in the Lord’s Supper. When we seek Him where He has promised to be,
we can have confidence that it is Him we have found and His gifts we have
received, rather than being left to wonder about feelings and intuitions which we
have no assurance are authentic.

Lutheranism is more than a cultural identity or a denominational label. In fact, this cultural and institutional baggage may be the primary obstacle in Lutheranism’s path.

To be a Lutheran is not dependent on a code of behavior or a set of common customs. Instead, to be a Lutheran is to receive Jesus in His Word, Body, and Blood for the forgiveness of sins in the Divine Service; and to be bearers of this pure Truth to a broken world corrupted with sin, death, and every lie of the devil and man’s own sinful heart.

While the false and misleading ideas of human religious invention are appealing to sin-blinded minds, they fail when exposed to the realities of life. It is tragic when souls are led to confusion and despair because of the false religious ideas with which they are surrounded. The Biblical doctrine taught by the Apostles and restored at the Reformation holds answers which are relevant regardless of time or place and offers assurance of forgiven sins and eternal life who all who believe its message.

I am a husband, a father, the pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church (LCMS) in Burt, IA, and track chaplain at Algona Raceway.